Preparing to picket Doc's and pack upcoming town board meetings, residents are organizing to oppose the sports bar's request to offer adult entertainment.

Calling the response "overwhelming," Hancock Street's Cheryl Shea says she expects to collect 3,000 signatures from fellow residents appalled by what Kevin Coady Sr. wants to add to his East Main Street pub.

At a strategy session last night, a group of residents set a date - Saturday, March 8 - to picket at Doc's.

"I'd encourage them to do it," said selectmen Chairman Bill Buckley, saying it would be an exercise of their First Amendment rights.

Shea said more than 300 copies of a petition are circulating, urging Coady to take back his plans to make his family-friendly sports bar into an over-21 club. On the application for a special permit, Coady never says what sort of adult entertainment the pub plans.

"The local churches are signing it, the schools," she said.

It's key at this point, Shea said, for opponents to sculpt solid arguments against the plan and pack Tuesday's Planning Board meeting and March 13's Zoning Board of Appeals public hearing with supporters.

"We don't want to turn this into a circus," Shea said. "On the emotional side, yes, we're concerned about crime. We're concerned about the kind of people it's going to bring into our community."

The two boards are limited to weighing planning and zoning-related issues only.

"We want to keep the emotions out of the room and focus on the facts," Shea said. "This is not an emotional issue."

The Planning Board votes on a "favorable" or "unfavorable" recommendation, which it will send to the Zoning Board of Appeals.

The Zoning Board opens its meeting at 7 p.m. on March 13, welcoming public input before taking action on Doc's application for the special permit.

Should the application "survive that process," Buckley said, "then a license amendment would go to the selectmen."

Selectmen on Monday adopted rigorous regulations that Police Chief Thomas O'Loughlin and Town Counsel Gerald Moody proposed - the toughest they say they could have for strip clubs and similar businesses.

Banning such a place from town is out of the question.

"The Constitution doesn't allow for that and case law doesn't," Buckley said. "That's not an option available to selectmen."

Instead, the 28 pages of regulations prohibit lap dances, private rooms and both patrons and employees from touching anyone else. Among other rules, tips can only be stuffed into jars on the edge of stage, security must be strong and "sufficient lighting" and annual licenses are required - available after investigations - for the club and its employees.

"We probably made it as regulated a business that exists in the country," Buckley said.

The rules just might drive applicants away.

"This isn't by any way an effort to pave the way or make it easier," he said.

"I support what the selectmen and the police chief did," Shea said. "I believe they did what they needed to do to protect our community if something like this ever does go in."

Danielle Ameden can be reached at 508-634-7521 or dameden@cnc.com.

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